Courtesy of Wikipedia, selected events of March 24:
* 1603 - James VI of Scotland also becomes James I King of England.
* 1765 - American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain passes the Quartering Act that requires the Thirteen Colonies to house British troops.
* 1832 - In Hiram, Ohio a group of men beat, tar and feather Mormon leader Joseph Smith, Jr..
* 1837 - Canada gives African men the right to vote.
* 1868 - Metropolitan Life Insurance Company is formed.
* 1882 - Robert Koch announces the discovery of the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis (mycobacterium tuberculosis).
* 1900 - New York City Mayor Robert Anderson Van Wyck breaks ground for a new underground "Rapid Transit Railroad" that would link Manhattan and Brooklyn.
* 1923 - Greece becomes a republic.
* 1936 - The longest game in NHL history was played between Detroit and Montreal. Detroit scored at 16:30 of the sixth overtime and won the game 1-0.
* 1944 - World War II: In an event later dramatized in the movie The Great Escape, 76 prisoners begin breaking out of Stalag Luft III.
* 1958 - Elvis Presley is officially inducted into the U.S.Army.
* 1972 - The United Kingdom imposes "Direct Rule" over Northern Ireland.
* 1976 - Argentina's military forces depose president Isabel Perón and start the National Reorganization Process.
* 1980 - Archbishop Óscar Romero is killed by right-wing terrorists while celebrating Mass in San Salvador.
* 1989 - Exxon Valdez oil spill: In Prince William Sound in Alaska, the Exxon Valdez spills 240,000 barrels (42,000 m³) of petroleum after running aground.
* 1998 - Jonesboro massacre: Two students, ages 11 and 13, fire upon teachers and students at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas; five people are dead and ten are wounded.
* 1999 - Kosovo War: NATO commences air bombardment against Yugoslavia, marking the first time NATO has attacked a sovereign country.
* 1999 - Mont Blanc Tunnel Fire: 39 people die when a Belgian transport truck carrying flour and margarine caught fire in the Mont Blanc Tunnel.
* 2008 - Bhutan officially becomes a democracy, with its first ever general election.
[ul]
[li]306 - Constantine I is proclaimed Roman emperor by his troops[/li][li]1603 - James VI of Scotland is crowned the first king of Great Britain[/li][li]1837 - The first commercial use of an electric telegraph was successfully demonstrated by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone on 25 July 1837 between Euston and Camden Town in London.[/li][li]1868 - Wyoming becomes a United States territory[/li][li]1920 - Telecommunications: the first transatlantic two-way radio broadcast takes place[/li][li]1946 - At Club 500 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis stage their first show as a comedy team[/li][li]1978 - Louise Brown, World’s first test tube baby born[/li][li]1984 - Salyut 7 Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to perform a space walk[/li][li]2007 - Pratibha Patil is sworn in as India’s first woman president[/li][li]Inca festival in honor of the thunder god Ilyap’a[/li][/ul]
1732 - The Royal Opera House opens at Covent Garden, London.
1900 - Max Planck, in his house at Grunewald, on the outskirts of Berlin, discovers the law of black body emission.
1917 - World War I: The US declares war on Austria-Hungary.
1930 - W1XAV in Boston, Massachusetts broadcasts video from the CBS radio orchestra program, The Fox Trappers. The broadcast also includes the first television commercial in the United States, an advertisement for I.J. Fox Furriers, who sponsored the radio show.
1941 - World War II: Attack on Pearl Harbor
1965 - Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras simultaneously lift mutual excommunications that had been in place since 1054.
1972 - Apollo 17, the last Apollo moon mission, is launched. The crew takes the photograph known as “The Blue Marble” as they leave the Earth.
1988 - Yasser Arafat recognizes the right of Israel to exist.
1995 - The Galileo spacecraft arrives at Jupiter, a little more than six years after it was launched by Space Shuttle Atlantis during Mission STS-34.
312 - Constantine the Great is said to have received his famous Vision of the Cross.
1275 - Traditional founding of the city of Amsterdam.
1682 - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is founded.
1810 - United States annexes the former Spanish colony of West Florida.
1904 - The first underground New York City Subway line opens; the system becomes the biggest in United States, and one of the biggest in world.
1936 - Mrs Wallis Simpson filed for divorce which would eventually allow her to marry King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom, thus forcing his abdication from the throne.
1954 - Benjamin O. Davis Jr. becomes the first African-American general in the United States Air Force.
1961 - NASA launched the first Saturn I rocket in Mission Saturn-Apollo 1.
1991 - Turkmenistan achieved independence from the Soviet Union.
2004 - Boston Red Sox win their first World Series in 86 years by defeating the St. Louis Cardinals four games to none.
*536 - Byzantine General Belisarius enters Rome while the Ostrogothic garrison peacefully leaves the city, returning the old capital to its empire.
*1437 - Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor, dies.
*1793 - New York City’s first daily newspaper, the American Minerva, is established by Noah Webster.
*1872 - In Louisiana, P. B. S. Pinchback becomes the first serving African-American governor of a U.S. state.
*1905 - In France, the law separating church and state is passed.
*1958 - Red Scare: The John Birch Society was founded in the United States.
*1961 - The trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Israel ends with him being found guilty of 15 criminal charges, including charges of crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people and membership of an outlawed organization.
*1979 - The eradication of the smallpox virus is certified, making smallpox the first and to date only human disease driven to extinction.
*1987 - Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The First Intifada begins in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
*1990 - Lech Wałęsa becomes the first directly elected president of Poland.
I share my birthday with:
1447 - Chenghua, Emperor of China (d. 1487)
1608 - John Milton, English poet (d. 1674)
1912 - Tip O’Neill, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives (d. 1994)
1916 - Kirk Douglas, American actor
1922 - Redd Foxx, American comedian (d. 1991)
1933 - Morton Downey Jr., American talk show host (d. 2001)
1934 - Dame Judi Dench, English actress
1942 - Dick Butkus, American football player
1957 - Donny Osmond, American singer and actor
1963 - Masako, Crown Princess of Japan
1974 - Canibus, American rapper
1953 - John Malkovich, American actor
for some reason I find it hilarious that John Milton and Canibus share a birthday.
1882 - Guiteau executed for killing Pres. Garfield.
1908 - Tunguska
1921 - Taft appointed Chief Justice of SCOTUS
1934 - Night of the Long Knives in Germany
Famous people sharing the birthday:
Paul Alphabetsoup Barras - a French leader for a few years between Robespierre and Napoleon
Esa-Pekka Salonen - LA Philharmonic conductor. Not great, but better than nothing.
Vincent D’Onofrio - “I am… in a world… of SHIT!”
Mike Tyson - self-explanatory
Michael Phelps - ditto. Same year, too.
Things that I recognize that happened on November 28:
1520: Magellan enters the Pacific Ocean
1793: Carl Jonas Love Almqvist, Swedish romantic poet, is born
1893: Women vote for the first time in a general election, in New Zealand
1912: Albania declares independence from the Ottoman Empire
1943: The Tehran conference between the Allies
1960: Mauritania becomes independent from France
1977: Fabio Grosso, Italian footballer, is born
1979: Chamillionaire, American rapper, is born (and as am I)
1989: The Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia
1994: Norway rejects EU-membership in a referendum
May 25th:
[ul]
[li]1085 - Alfonso VI of Castile takes Toledo, Spain back from the Moors[/li][li]1521 - The Diet of Worms ends when Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, issues the Edict of Worms, declaring Martin Luther an outlaw.[/li][li]1895 - Playwright, poet, and novelist Oscar Wilde is convicted of “committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons” and sentenced to serve two years in prison.[/li][li]1925 - Scopes Trial: John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.[/li][li]1940 - World War II: The Battle of Dunkirk begins[/li][li]1953 - The first public television station in the United States officially begins broadcasting as KUHT from the campus of the University of Houston.[/li][li]1966 - Explorer program: Explorer 32 launches[/li][li]2000 - Liberation Day of Lebanon. Israel withdraws its army from most of the Lebanese territory after 22 years of its first invasion in 1978.[/li][/ul]
I share my birth date with:
1803 - Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, English novelist and playwright
1878 - Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, American entertainer
1897 - Gene Tunney, American heavyweight champion
1898 - Bennett Cerf, American publisher, TV personality
1929 - Beverly Sills, American soprano
1939 - Dixie Carter, American actress
1939 - Ian McKellen, English actor
1944 - Frank Oz, English-born puppeteer and director
1978 - Brian Urlacher, American football player
1993 - Dilley sextuplets, American sextuplets
Anne Heche and Stacy London (“What Not to Wear”) share the same birthday. Both seem so much older than me though.
[ol]
[li]1793 - George Washington holds the first Cabinet meeting as President of the United States.[/li][li]1837 - The first practical electric motor in the US is patented by Thomas Davenport.[/li][li]1870 - Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, is sworn into the United States Senate, becoming the first African American ever to sit in the U.S. Congress.[/li][li]1928 - Charles Jenkins Laboratories of Washington, DC becomes the first holder of a television license from the Federal Radio Commission.[/li][li]1941 - February strike: First general & physical protest against Nazi anti-Jewish behaviour & -laws (Amsterdam)[/li][li]1951 - The first Pan American Games are held in Buenos Aires, Argentina.[/li][li]1986 - President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines flees the nation after 20 years of rule; Corazon Aquino becomes the first Filipino woman president.[/li][li]2008 - The country of Kosovo declares independence from Serbia.[/li][li]Kuwait’s national day[/li][li]People Power Day, special holiday in the Philippines[/li][/ol]
I also share this birthday with Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Enrico Caruso, John Foster Dulles, Zeppo Marx, Jim Backus, Ralph Stanley, Faron Young, Sally Jessy Raphael, Bob Schieffer, George Harrison, John Doe, and (sigh) Carrot Top, among others.
[ul]
[li]William “Pudge” Heffelfinger becomes the first American professional football player.[/li][li]The bodies of Robert Scott and his men are found on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.[/li][li]Austria becomes a republic.[/li][li]Tim Berners-Lee publishes a proposal for the World Wide Web. :D[/li][li]Auguste Rodin born in 1840.[/li][li]Grace Kelly born in 1929.[/li][li]Exchange National Bank (Chicago) opens first drive-up teller window.[/li][li]The infamous exploding whale incident.[/li][li]First photos of the “Loch Ness monster” were taken.[/li][li]Opening of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.[/li][/ul]
1066: Battle of Hastings
1592: Date does not take place, due to Gregorian Adjustment
1966: Inauguration of Montreal metro
1981: Hosni Mubarak assumes presidency of Egypt
2008: General election in Canada
Some more from Wikipedia:
1322 - Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeats King Edward II of England at Byland, forcing Edward to accept Scotland’s independence.
1926 - The children’s book Winnie-the-Pooh, by A.A. Milne, is first published.
1957 - Queen Elizabeth II becomes the first Canadian monarch to open the Parliament of Canada with the Speech from the Throne.
1964 - American civil rights movement leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr becomes the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
1979 - The first Gay Rights March on Washington, D.C., the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, demands “an end to all social, economic, judicial, and legal oppression of lesbian and gay people,” draws 200,000 people.
Born on this date:
1630 - Sophia of Hanover, Princess Palatine and Electress of Saxony (d. 1714)
1633 - James II of England and VII of Scotland (d. 1701)
1784 - King Ferdinand VII of Spain (d. 1833)
1882 - Eamon de Valera, Irish politician and patriot (d. 1975)
1888 - Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand writer (d. 1923)
1890 - Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. general and 34th President of the United States (d. 1969)
1892 - Sumner Welles, American diplomat (d. 1961)
1893 - Lillian Gish, American actress (d. 1993)
1894 - E. E. Cummings, American poet (d. 1962)
1906 - Hannah Arendt, German political theorist and writer (d. 1975)
1911 - Lê Ðức Thọ, Vietnamese general and politician, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1990)
1916 - C. Everett Koop, United States Surgeon General
1930 - Mobutu Sese Seko, President of Zaire (d. 1997)
Oct 6 -
1582 - Due to the implementation of the Gregorian calendar, this day is skipped in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.
1683 - William Penn brings 13 German immigrant families to the colony of Pennsylvania, marking the first immigration of German people to America.
1889 - Thomas Edison shows his first motion picture.
1908 - Austria annexes Bosnia and Herzegovina.
1927 - Opening of The Jazz Singer, the first prominent talking movie.
1966 - LSD is declared illegal in the United States.
1981 - President of Egypt, Anwar al-Sadat is assassinated.
1989 - Bette Davis, American actress died
1995 - 51 Pegasi is discovered to be the first major star apart from the Sun to have a planet (and extrasolar planet) orbiting around it.
2007 - Jason Lewis completes the first human-powered circumnavigation of the globe.
Harry Truman born, 1884
Coca-Cola invented, 1886
Don Rickles born, 1926
World War II ends in Europe, 1945 Let It Be, final Beatles album, released, 1970
American Indian Movement ends occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, 1973
David Berkowitz, “Son of Sam,” pleads guilty to murders, 1978
Soviet Union boycotts Los Angeles Olympics, 1984
Estonia declares independence from Soviet Union, 1990
Dana Plato dies of drug overdose, 1999
1455 (est): Gutenberg printed his first book
1820: Cato Street Conspiracy to murder entire British Cabinet uncovered
1821: First US pharmacy college established in Philadelphia
1836: Remember the Alamo!
1847: Battle of Buena Vista, Mexican War
1870: Mississippi readmitted to the Union
1896: Tootsie Roll introduced
1898: Emile Zola imprisoned for writing “J’Accuse”
1917: February Revolution begins in Russia
1954: Vaccination for polio begins in Pittsburgh
1956: Khruschev denounces Stalin
Bonus–Two kidnappings:
1958: Juan Manuel Fangio
2002: Ingrid Betancourt
